On
Deceiver,
DIIV let their music roar as they stared down the vicious cycle of addiction and trauma. If they'd kept seething on
Frog in Boiling Water, it would've made sense -- its meditations on how normalized society's decay has become took the band long, frustrating years to record -- but their fourth full-length takes a less obvious and more expressive path. Like the album's titular metaphor, where a frog accepts boiling to death if the water surrounding it slowly gets hotter,
DIIV gradually exposes their audience to devastating sentiments by cloaking them in seductive sonics. "In Amber" sets the album's tone with disasters of late-stage capitalism and climate change and their attendant cynicism and despair, but the despondent beauty of its lush distortion and
Zachary Cole Smith's vocals when he sings, "Remember they told us/The tide lifts our boats up/That ocean is dried out" is much more affecting than a screed. The humanity of
DIIV's music is always at the forefront of
Frog in Boiling Water, and
Chris Coady's production lets them sound as vast or as intimate as they need to on each song. They're both on "Brown Paper Bag," one of many moments where the band blurs the boundaries between destruction and triumph as deftly as they find common ground between shoegaze and grunge (in this song's case, a hybrid of
Smashing Pumpkins and
My Bloody Valentine). In
DIIV's hands, these familiar sounds are less about nostalgic comfort than creating a murky, floating unease, something they do brilliantly with "Raining on Your Pillow"'s gorgeous gloom. In much the same way,
Frog in Boiling Water's deliberate pace heightens the tension when
Smith draws out his whispers on the taut, rippling "Everyone Out" or when "Reflected"'s pyrrhic victory provides one of the album's climactic guitar onslaughts. As dark as they get on these songs,
DIIV leaves just enough room for hope, even if it means embracing collapse to find a fresh start. They do so most strikingly on "Soul-Net," an aching standout where
Smith sings, "Just say/'I'm not afraid/I love my pain/I know we can leave this prison'" with the sincerity of someone who knows first-hand that the only way out is through. Though its songs about a world falling apart were difficult for
DIIV to make,
Frog in Boiling Water is their most cohesive work. It's a true slow burn of an album, capturing listeners by degrees and echoing the band's subtle yet dramatic growth since
Oshin. ~ Heather Phares
